-----Roxy POV-----
inaudible noises
Mn?
Did I pass out?
inaudible noises
As I pushed myself up from the mattress, my palms pressing into the worn fabric for leverage, a sting flared sharply across my forehead.
"Urgh... What happened..."
I pressed my hand against my forehead in response to the pain, and slowly, the last fragments of my memory surfaced.
"Oh... That's right... I saved the village..."
After the goblins scuffed back retreating, I cast Columbiums to pour out the fire ravaging the village.
"I must have overexerted myself and ended up passing out..."
I looked around the unfamiliar room, taking in the humble furniture, my eyes catching on a folded blanket and a basin of water left near the bedside before muffled voices from beyond the front door pulled my attention away.
I could barely make out what was being said, but I could grasp the underlying tone of the conversation was one of distress.
I swung my legs off the mattress and got up, only to notice I'd been changed into a set of clothes noticeably bigger than my size. I tugged at the collar, glancing down at the sleeves swallowing my hands. Showing myself to the people who'd cared for me dressed like that would be far too embarrassing, so... nothing bad would come of simply eavesdropping on the conversation a little first, right?
As I weighed whether to announce myself awake or not, I crept forward and realized I'd wandered as far as what seemed to be the living room. I pressed myself against the wall just outside it, peeking around the edge with one eye. There were four people conversing around the wooden table, all of them wearing tired looks, but the two men at opposite ends of the table carried deep, dark circles under their eyes, their haggard expressions showing they'd been dealing with a great deal of stress.
-----Narrator POV-----
"Paul... I understand your point but we are in the middle of fall! No merchants will be willing to negotiate a trade at a fair market price when we are at the edge of winter season!"
"Laws, you have to work with me! Half of our food reserves are gone and the village is still recovering from the raid! At this rate we won't even be able to harvest this year's haul!"
"That is precisely why we have to be prudent with the resources that we have, Paul! We are talking about a triple price increase at a time when our only source of income has now been cut off! What about the imported medicine and construction materials that we are supposed to pay for next week? We need those resources to restore some of what we lost—"
BAM!
Paul's fist came down against the table, scattering a few of the loose papers to the floor.
"ARE YOU TELLING ME THE VILLAGERS HAVE TO STARVE THIS WINTER?!"
"... Paul, though we lost half of our food supplies, the village can still survive throughout the winter with the rest of it."
"... I don't understand, Laws, for the past five years the village has always needed three-quarters of the food supply reserves to survive the winter."
"... You are correct, Paul, but today I counted the casualty numbers, and we lost twenty of the residents, with ten more injured."
Paul's jaw tightened at the number, his eyes dropping briefly to the table.
"... That is one third of our residency."
"... If we regulate the amount of food we give out to the people, then we might make it through."
The man with dirty blonde hair placed his hand on his chin as he looked at the table, where a pile of papers lay spread across the surface, his fingers drumming once against his jaw before stilling.
He closed his eyes and sighed.
"The weak will be culled..."
"... We are in hard times."
Laws picked up a paper from the desk, his eyes scanning down the page before he set it back down and looked up.
"Though we are in no condition to continue building the wall, I have a suggestion where we can spare both the manpower and the resources while still completing this project."
The man who had seemed utterly worn down perked up, lifting his head and raising his gaze toward the elf before him.
"We are halfway done. If we can get it finished before the winter, then we can spare our combat forces from patrolling through the snow. What suggestion do you have, Laws?"
"Let's have Roxy build it."
Roxy's chest dropped for a split second, and she caught herself before letting out any noise that might get her caught in this embarrassing outfit, her fingers curling tighter into the hem of the oversized shirt as she pressed herself flatter against the wall.
"Roxy... The demon-folk—no, I mean that magician?"
"Yes. She is a magician of high caliber. After she helped me clear the goblins from the stonesmith's, she went back to the residential area to fend off the goblin raid."
"Oh, yes, I remember. She helped put out the village fire as well."
"Yes, she is a capable mage. She mentioned she is intermediate-advanced in earth magic, so with her help we could speed up production considerably."
"Not a bad idea, Laws, but I won't allow it..." Paul shook his head firmly. "She is the only mage in the village we can count on to fend off any irregularities. Besides, mages tend to frown upon manual labor — the last thing we need is to upset her with a task like this."
Roxy thought that she would not mind helping the village with the wall construction, but even if she cast Wall Fortress for the next two weeks, it wouldn't cover even a quarter of the village's perimeter. She simply didn't have enough mana to cover that much ground.
"Don't worry, Paul. Roxy is not like the mages we've encountered before. I can tell through her eyes that she cares about the lives of others."
A faint heat rose in Roxy's cheeks, and she pressed her palm lightly against one, grateful the wall hid her from view.
"Anyway, enough of work..." Laws set down the paper in his hand and turned toward the blonde woman seated quietly nearby. "Zenith, Lilia... Thank you for taking care of Sylphie."
Zenith rose from her seat with a warm smile, smoothing her skirt as she straightened.
"Oh, I don't mind at all, Laws-san. She has been such a sweet girl and hasn't given us much trouble at all."
"Is... she handling it well?"
Zenith's smile faltered slightly, her hands folding together in front of her.
"She is quite healthy, but sometimes throughout the day she seems to space out for long periods. I'm sure she's still going through the recovery."
Laws's expression tightened further, the lines around his eyes deepening.
"Naturally... no child should go through something like that..."
The room fell into a dreadful, prolonged silence, no one quite meeting anyone else's eyes, before Laws spoke again.
"How is Rudeus, Paul?"
The knight flinched at the mention of the boy, his fingers curling slowly into a fist against the table's edge, the knuckles whitening before he even opened his mouth. He tilted his head toward the stairs, his jaw working silently for a moment, as if chewing on words he hadn't decided whether to let out. When they finally came, they came sharp, his lips pulling into a thin, disdainful line.
"He still hasn't come out of his room."
Laws's shoulders dropped, just slightly, the paper in his hand lowering to the table as his gaze drifted toward the same stairs, lingering there a moment too long.
"How long has it been... three months?"
"... The people of this village are going through an existential crisis while my son sits in his comfy warm bed—"
"Not now, Paul." Zenith's eyes flicked toward the maid before settling back on her husband.
Paul's leg bounced once under the table, a restless twitch he didn't seem to notice himself making.
"Zenith! Don't you find it strange that a young boy his age has no desire to move around? Especially since, until three months ago, he was extremely active and moving around the house?"
The man pushed back from the table, the wood groaning faintly under his palms as he turned to face the maid standing quietly in the corner, her hands folded in a formal stance that didn't quite hide the way her shoulders had drawn inward the moment his eyes landed on her.
"Lilia! You've nursed children of nobles back in the capital — is Rudeus's behavior normal?"
A bead of sweat slid down Lilia's temple, and her fingers tightened around each other in front of her apron. Her eyes darted to Zenith, then dropped to the floor, then back up to Paul.
"... It is not uncommon for children to develop erratic behaviors after experiencing trauma."
Paul's eyebrow lifted, his weight shifting forward onto his knuckles where they still pressed into the table.
"Trauma?! Rudeus just passed out from mana exhaustion! Everyone goes through that when learning magic!"
His voice climbed with each word, the restless bounce of his leg turning into a full shift of his weight, half-rising from the chair.
"I will not raise a son who is a wimp! You know what? He will leave that room right now, and I will see to it myself—"
The chair scraped hard against the floorboards as he shoved it back, but Zenith was already moving, crossing the space between them in two quick steps and planting both hands flat against his shoulders, holding him down.
"Calm down, Paul! You've been moving around nonstop for the past three days! You are not acting like yourself!"
He pushed against her grip, his arms straining forward, the muscles along his jaw pulled tight, but the resistance lasted only a second before it gave out, his shoulders sinking back into the chair. His arms shook faintly even after they'd stopped pushing. And yet, his mouth kept moving anyway.
"Zenith! I am not wrong on this! It's strange for a child his age to show no interest in story time at night! It's concerning that a child his age doesn't play with any of the toys we bought him! And it is disturbing for a child his age to sit completely still for an entire day, for months now!"
Zenith's hands stayed pressed to his shoulders, no longer gripping so much as holding, her fingers trembling faintly against the fabric of his shirt. She bit down on her lip, hard enough that it paled, her eyes fixed on his without blinking.
Neither of them looked away first. The silence stretched long enough that even Laws sat still, the paper in his hand forgotten.
Their situation was so unusual that even asking other villagers for help had proven fruitless, and the weeks of circling the same fear without resolution had worn on both of them, their shoulders sagging a little further each time the conversation returned to it, their hands finding each other's less and less.
Tack.
A small sound of bare feet touched against the cold stone floor. Paul froze halfway out of his seat, Zenith's hands still braced on his shoulders, both of their heads turning toward the sound along with Laws and Lilia.
The young mage stood at the edge of the room, her messy blue hair falling loose across her face, an oversized shirt slipping off one shoulder and pooling around her knees. She tugged briefly at the collar, then stopped, her hand dropping back to her side as she took in the four faces staring back at her.
Her eyes, when they met Paul's, didn't waver or search for an exit the way a child's might. They held steady, unblinking, moving from him to Zenith without a flicker of hesitation. Paul's mouth, still open from whatever he'd meant to say next, closed slowly. Zenith's fingers loosened on his shoulders, her shoulders dropping an inch as the breath she'd been holding finally left her.
No one spoke for a moment. Then the girl bowed, one hand smoothing the hem of her borrowed shirt as she straightened back up.
"I apologize for eavesdropping. My name is Roxy Mirgudia, A-rank Adventurer, village guard for Buena Village, and magic tutor for the son of Paul Greyrat and Zenith Greyrat. Could you please tell me more about... Rudeus?"